


5 times Rip knew that Time hadn't completely forsaken him

by kleptoandpyro



Series: There's always time to steal [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 5 + 1 Fic, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV) Season 1, DCCW Rare Pair Swap, Declarations Of Love, Domestic, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Last Kiss, Leonard Snart Lives, Love Languages, M/M, Other Legends (mentioned) - Freeform, Poetic, Queer Character, Rip Hunter-centric, Self-Sacrifice, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 21:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20103781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleptoandpyro/pseuds/kleptoandpyro
Summary: ...and 1 time he made quite sure he didn't forsake someone else.Exploration of the 5 love languages + 1 grand gesture. Written for the DCCW Rarepair Swap 2019





	5 times Rip knew that Time hadn't completely forsaken him

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HiddenViolet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenViolet/gifts).

> Prompt: Rip/Leonard. Rip saves Leonard from his fate. Maybe smut. 
> 
> For HiddenViolet, once more, who was my last swap partner! Hope you can forgive me for posting this at the 11th hour, I wanted to get it right. Hopefully I did.

### i. Quality time

It's a comfortable silence that they sit in. Here in Rip’s study. The kind that only comes from a lot of practise and a lot of history between a particular set of people after time has buffed away the sharp edges of minor grievances leaving only a smooth and calming presence behind.

Rip had almost forgotten what it felt like. To sit like this with someone. Content and at peace.

Because every silence, and every well meaning person attached to one, still has nuances that Rip can feel, can see in his periphery, physical minutia that steals his concentration away from whatever he’s doing and makes his surefooted focus, stumble.

Yet, it isn’t like that with one Leonard Snart. Not even after the first time he had invited himself into Rip’s domain, sauntering in with cool indifference one day all dark lines and enigmatic expression. Rip remembers how he’d looked on curiously, watching as Leonard had made himself comfortable in a far chair, then - slowly, deliberately - stroked the air before a bookcase, seemingly deciding on which tome to pluck from it, before settling on a psychology first edition; its blue leather slightly faded, its spine a little crooked.

Rip remembers the brief beat beforehand. _ “Didn’t strike you as a reader in your leisure time, Mr Snart,” _he’d asked.

_ “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover,” _came the careful response, as if it was expected.

And that had been that. As if some careful agreement had been made where the _ why _ and the _ what _ only existed in the fine print.

For Rip has been a timeship Captain for 13 years and is accustomed to a very unique kind of silence, one made from the tilt and yaw of the Waverider, the soft hum of a spinning timedrive at its heart, the barest billow of a trenchcoat hanging on the back of his chair and fragile flutter of a page on his desk, the soft crystalline tinkle of a tumbler glass against polished wood and the sigh of his bones expanding from the heat of whiskey in his breast, all resolving together into a familiar white noise that resonates at the same frequency as his thoughts.

To know there existed another kind of calmness in which he could simply _ be, _ is intriguing.

Occasionally he looks up from his journal and lets his eyes flit to Leonard sitting slack in the antique chair on the other side of the room if for no other reason to confirm that he’s still there, as his black jeans, and charcoal leather jacket and salt and pepper hair - despite the sharp contrast against the beiges and vanillas of the room - aren’t enough to remind Rip that he is. As if the man has already snuck into his blind spot.

For Leonard’s brand of silence is passive, humming low and strong like a deep ocean current, carrying Rip along into its wake so resolutely that he wonders if he had ever been outside of its pull at all.

But Leonard _ is _ there - his ankle balanced on a lean thigh, ice-blue eyes softly intense in concentration, slender fingers rolling a languid staccato in the air as he reads. And even when Rip’s eyes drop back to his own text, the quiet controlled breathing, the stealthy whisper of eyelashes, imperceptible bunching and flexing of leather, the gravitas of a mind always perpetually one step ahead of every other around it, doesn’t impede him, only becomes an accompaniment.

It is unlike any other.

So different from the heavy weight of _ expectation _ in the air, swinging like a pendulum between a demigod who is bolstered by a lofty destiny he can not reach and a demigoddess resigned to picking apart the carcass of fate she has regularly watched fall to the ground at her feet.

And the positive brainstorm of _ astonishment _ that follows Martin wherever he goes, ever crackling with static at all the wonders offered by the _ Waverider_, never fully earthing.

And the prickling sensation of _ curiosity _ in the air from all the notions and questions and comments and queries, embiggened and minute, that Dr Palmer can’t fully learn to suppress, each matched with wide bright eyes and a broad smile that shines in Rip's periphery.

And the _ suspicion _ that rolls off Miss Lance like smoke, reaching into every nook and cranny, pervading the dark corners and staying sentinel on the walls, not so much holding a silence as holding it hostage.

And the infectious _ ambition _ that never truly rests with Mr Jackson, something that needs to be passed around and shared, a relay of dreams and goals.

Mr Rory has yet to truly master any form of quiet.

Leonard stretches with the silence, breathes out the atrophy and settles, and something inside Rip settles too.

### ii. Gifts

As a boy fresh on the steps of the Refuge, he’d stood out more so than the other orphans. Eyes too haunted to carry a smile, hands too quick and adept to play fairly with their marbles and their prized conkers, Michael had first taken to solitary activities, much to the sad smile of Mary Xavier; wandering far into the vast garden to eat the sour gooseberries and dirty his trousers with wildflower pollen, searching through the wood-warm ribs of the attic for secrets and moths and only returning with dust and cobwebs, meandering down cobbled streets and sitting on their uneven walls watching the world wheel by with or without him.

_ “If you’re so sure you’d rather not talk to anyone, then you should at least go and see Tom,” _ Mary had told him one afternoon, folding the bedsheets. Then she’d turned to look at him, calculatingly before seeming to come to a kind of internal agreement. _ “Yes, I think you’ll like him. He comes and goes but likes to sun himself by the compost heap. Oh and do give him this, I’ve got no use for it.” _

And he’d been shooed away out of the door without so much as a backwards glance never mind an explanation as to who this Tom was and why she had handed him the last of the cooked chicken.

It hadn’t taken long to get answers as, for all his distrust of people, Michael had a healthy curiosity.

Tom, as it turned out, was an alley cat.

A mean looking thing with stormy black-grey fur, everything about him dark and murky save for a streak of ginger across his forehead and tortoise-shell eyes.

Michael had expected instant recoil and hackle-raising hissing the second the cat saw him, but save for a quick jerk of head in his direction, the cat was quite still.

Rather, he’d simply watched Michael imperiously, hyperfocused, like the location of every slow-witted rodent and warm sun spot and perfectly placed rough edge were written in his eyes, and it went on for so long that Michael had wondered if they truly were; somehow embossed there from all his explorations like some afterimage from staring into the sun.

After a while, the cat seemed to either commit the new geocache to memory or decide that he was no longer worth the interrogation and - with a slow blink - went back to watching the sparrow picking off the juicy larvae from the vegetable pile, but making no move to seize it.

Michael immediately felt a kindred spirit with Tom, who it turned out, really liked chicken.

He would come to learn of Tom’s favourite places over the following days and weeks; like the alley next to the Fish and Chip shop, the tractor tyre in the playpark, the cobblestone wall next to the tree where chaffinches rushed in and out, and in and out some more, chirping noisily and making the cat’s ears perk and pupils widen.

_ But the compost heap must be his favourite_, thought Michael days later, when Tom dropped a dead sparrow on the wall - _another one?_ \- gave him that intense look again, and promptly abandoned it, slinking away to business anew.

Michael would always come back with leftovers and sometimes chalk or yoyos and sit and doodle on the sun baked stone and tell Tom all kinds of things as he ate, ever watching, ever listening, never interrupting, and Michael would always promise to come back.

It wasn’t always sparrows that Tom caught, he also left mice and large spiders with some of their legs missing and even a frog once or twice. And when the little dead parcels followed Michael back from the wall to the doorstep he finally understood that this wasn’t the lazy sport of a cat too content with dinners to follow through on his instincts but rather the affection of a creature who did not see anything other than a kindred spirit too.

This is why Rip knows that the items he finds on his desk after missions, these trinkets and curios, momentos and signifiers, are not there to mock the ex-Time Master who couldn’t prevent their removal, or prove the skill of the thief who took them so unwillingly from their time, but spoke of a different act.

One which said, _ For you, the one who chose me, I chose this. _

And Rip smiles and keeps every one.

### iii. Acts

He takes his gun when Rip isn’t looking. Rip has known for a couple of weeks now. He feels it should annoy him some, that his weapon goes missing, and by the hand of a criminal, no less.

But, it doesn’t. Oddly.

Mainly, he supposes, as the gun always seems to turn up in slightly better nick than the last he saw of it, but less mainly that it affords Rip less chances to misplace it, but _ more _mainly, because he realises that - and he doesn’t know when he’d decided this but the more he thinks on it, the more he agrees with himself - there’s no other person on the ship he trusts more with it.

And that’s something he never quite expected which, given his profession, should be routine.

He’s never handled the Cold Gun before, and he doesn’t think that Leonard, as far as he’s come, would be all that willing to share. But as the fellow owner - or self appointed custodian, he corrects himself - of a high powered weapon, it somehow just feels right.

In saying that, though, he would like to confirm that it really is still on the ship.

He comes to a stop in front of a set of quarters he’s never visited, knocks on the door in front of him and waits. There’s a pause.

“Come in, _ Captain_.”

Rip does, and what he sees makes him stop and-

Oh.

_ Oh. _

Leonard is sitting on the bed, leaning casually against the back wall, his legs long black angles, Rip’s revolver at his side - what’s_ left _ of the revolver - running over the piece in hand with a cleaning cloth. His cool eyes are focused on the task at hand, skilled fingers gently gripping the metal as he rubs languidly, not even looking up as Rip, slightly disoriented at the sight, enters the room.

Without really meaning to, Rip finds himself stumbling in and taking a seat on a crate; watching.

Just watching Leonard work.

Whether it’s the curious look on his face or the relaxed mood of the room, Leonard doesn’t comment on Rip’s silent diligence, and Rip doesn’t know whether or not to be thankful for that as he doesn’t fully know what to say.

All he knows is a swelling warmth is growing inside of him, expanding more the more he watches, as if someone has stuck bellows into his chest and pushed the ends together.

He can tell that Leonard has done this plenty of times before, if not to the revolver, then certainly to his own gun; the way he carefully takes each component and buffs away the singe marks and grime until not a millimetre is left unattended; every angle accounted for, his thumb rolling in a practised pattern, dipping back into the cleaning solution then returning to where he left off. Then placing the piece gently, almost reverently, atop the towel before picking up another and beginning the process again.

From the gripping plates to the locking bolt, from the hammer to the extractor rod, it is all given due scrutiny, quite possibly the same level of scrutiny that Rip is applying right now to the enigmatic thief.

Then he tends to the cylinder, extracting an energy cartridge one at a time and inspecting each humming blue core for signs of damage before laying it back down, satisfied.

By the time he reaches the barrel, and picks up a bore brush from his own personal collection to tend to it, the smell of solvent is thick in the air and the warm feeling has risen into Rip’s face.

It had never occurred to him just how fragile, how delicate, his gun was until now. To see each piece so attentively, daresay lovingly, cared for - something so important to Rip, held in so high a regard.

He wonders how often this intimate act had resulted in a clean shot, how often - unknown to him - he’d avoided a misfire or jammed cartridge all because of this moment replayed earlier in time. Just how often had Leonard saved him?

As if time itself had been watching and promptly awoken from some trance, things seemed to suddenly return to normal speed, perhaps even a little quicker.

As efficiently as he had disassembled it, Leonard reassembles it; slotting each piece together as if stacking balls on the pool table, before spinning the cylinder in a grand flourish and pointing the thing directly at Rip, eyes finally meeting his for the first time.

Rip, almost forgetting he was actually here and not simply at his desk watching a hologram, jerks at the motion, almost losing against the impulse to raise his hands.

Leonard smirks before flipping the gun over and offering Rip the handle. “Now you’ve got no excuse to do it properly yourself,” he says, each word drawn out like the practised circles he’d made with his thumb.

Rip takes the gun, not once needing to look at it to be quite sure he is now holding a gleaming, finely tuned weapon operating at peak efficiency. He responds with, “Honestly, Mr Snart, I think I disagree.”

### iv. Words of affirmation

It is not what is said aloud, but what is _ not. _

The weighted pause after a sentence, a lilt and a raise of brows, a hitch here and an oh so quiet, considerate holding of breath there, pulling a finger away from the trigger, deciding that _ no_, _ you aren’t ready for this, and neither am I. _As if the words that would follow are abusage, too terrible and dangerous to be released unto the world, able to freeze and immobilize flesh with more efficiency than a cold gun, best kept contained behind thick walls at gunpoint where - despite all their innocence, desperately thrusting their arms through the bars and asking to be heard over the din of shame - they are exactly where they deserve to be.

Rip knows that no key or fantastical jailbreak would ever be enough to release these closely guarded thoughts; hidden away so tightly, buried deep down beneath a parka of reputation, and a cocked hip of roguishness and the cool indifference of one criminal more ruthless towards his own thoughts and feelings than any judge and jury condemning the actions of Captain Cold.

There were many instances where he’d heard the signs, felt the intake of breath.

The bridge of the _ Waverider_.

A 1950’s police station.

Salvation, Dakota Territory, 1871, where Leonard had appeared over Rip’s left shoulder, black and blue, an already dark bruise against the sepia street. _ “Town’s seen a lot of interesting. S’pose you got one of those doohickeys that erase people’s memories or something.” _

_ “...No. But scepticism and disbelief are a far more effective tool,” _ he’d said, walking.

_ “Ah, so if anybody here talks, no one’ll believe ‘em.” _

He’d felt the context change in the very air, a subtle changing wind. The words had sounded so resigned beneath their flippancy, a duality, like an echo from below rising up to briefly remind Rip that the speaker was still there this time saying in a voice, weak with disuse, _ Would you believe me if I told you? _

_ “Would you, Mr Snart?” _ Rip had asked, quietly imploring. _ Would you tell me? _

For even if the way was clear, no walls hiding them, or bars keeping them, or ID number labelling them, or acquittal liberating them, these words were condemned.

And in the silence that followed, in the weighty pause and the hitch and the considerate holding of breath, Rip could hear what was not said, perhaps unsaid for the first time in Leonard’s life.

_ I plead the fifth. _

### v. Touch

“_No one _ is _ bribing _the coin collector.”

“Unless a certain pickpocket acquires the rare Brasher Doubloon that he has been searching for, the very same make of coin that, I have under good authority, resides in your wallet, Captain.”

“That, Martin, would be exceedingly _ brash _ of him, indeed.”

Not even a minute ticks by into the next plan of attack before Rip notices it.

And he doesn’t believe its validity for a second.

Not one.

For Rip was once a cutpurse and so he knows the fleeting, deft touch and graceful - oh so_ careful _ \- flex of the wrist employed to delve into a pocket without detection. Knows its rolling lines and dance of fingers and the sway of a body at the tender age of 10. He’d learned it from older more experienced urchins as they flitted this way and that up the market streets, diving for hidden treasure in the sea of unsuspecting souls, that roaming Argos.

Riding a bike had nothing on that motion.

But Leonard knows this dance better, is far more accomplished at its movements, had become the master long ago in alleyways and sodden bars of Central City and Keystone and Rip had seen him work, on missions, the easy charming smile - to distract - the curl of fingers inside a coat, the swift concealment, the ordinary departure. It was all over in a matter of seconds, and they were never the wiser.

And yet, as Rip stands here at the console, his team bickering between themselves over something or other, he feels something he’d never thought he’d feel, certainly not coming from the direction of Leonard Snart to his left…

A touch, warm as the depths of a winter coat, soft as a question, brushing his side.

_ The cheek of it! _

Rip’s wallet is in the inner pocket to his left, the one he’d just used all his Captainly authority to forbid the taking of. And here it was, in the crosshairs.

For all its audacity the movement is controlled, coming forward then stopping for a moment, considering, then - slowly, glacially slow - extending and turning like the cogs of Rip’s mind. And Rip simply stands and lets it happen because this isn’t about proving worth, or a display of skill, but the brashness of a thief who has no interest in suppressing his roots - unlike Rip - and would rather let them extend and burrow deep into this jacket pocket and soak up everything they can find.

The others are still talking, Ray’s animated tones getting cut across by Sara’s sharp interjections, Martin tutting and Mick’s bored eating an incessant chorus in the back, and the hand is still.

But not for long. For when Leonard’s slow drawling comes to life, drowning out all others, those fingers begin to pull at a zip.

The console is high and the team fixed on Leonard and his easy charming smile - distracting - and not on the curl of fingers inside a coat; all of them none the wiser.

He speaks a little louder, urges forward with a smarter scheme and the fingers invade Rip’s pocket, those incessant roots drawing up; Rip feels his mouth go dry.

When he counters an argument by Carter Rip feels the drag of knuckles down his flank, gooseflesh rising behind it, an involuntary chill trickling down his spine.

And when they start to yield to his honeyed words, finger pads stroking deep and purposeful across the fragile skin at a navel, so yield does Rip.

_ May I? _

_ ...Yes. _

A plan is agreed on. The deft hand grasps his wallet and Rip lets it go willingly. It takes him a moment to notice the lack of talking.

“So, what do you think about all that, Captain?” comes the drawl in Rip’s direction, the searching hands already out of sight, ice-blue eyes glimmering like the Doubloon no longer in Rip’s possession. Like none of it ever happened. Rip has no idea what the team just agreed on.

“Brash, Mr Snart. Quite _ brash_.”

### +1 Grand Gesture

Leonard can count on one hand the number of times in his life that he’s been truly left speechless. Usually a reaction to some bullheaded member of his crew biting off way more than they can chew, otherwise some horror story involving alcoholic parents getting carried away with their kids in the rougher parts of town, or else some new metahuman related craziness turning Central City into a science fiction novel.

Even when Lisa had been kidnapped by Lewis, the bastard barely looking up from the set of blueprints on the table as he’d told Leonard what he’d done, and what_ he’d do _ should he not get his way, Leonard had raged and spat and hissed as much bile as he could muster at the time.

And even when he’d stood at the Oculus, looking Druce dead in the eye as time billowed and swelled around them, and he saw the fear and realisation dawn in his face at his impending death, he’d still had something to say - loud and proud - to the Universe.

And even when Rip had come charging into the Oculus chamber not seconds later, a mad glint in his eye and a gleaming pistol in his hand, orchestrating an escape, he was anything but reserved in his delight.

When they boarded the jumpship - still telling the Time Masters where they could shove it.

When they outran the blast and rode the shockwave into space - making parallels between the loss of control and his first motorcycle.

When they landed in Central City - almost giddy about being back on solid ground, back home, as if he’d broken out of the personal holding cell of Death itself.

But this, standing here across from Rip now, watching the twisting of his usually self-assured face, the myriad of emotions flashing in his timeless eyes as he recounts what he’s just done - done for_ Leonard _ \- is like being cast directly into the vacuum of space, like having his own cold gun unloaded onto his chest.

There is no air left, not in the city, not on Earth, save for one pocket, one final gust that forces its way out of his collapsed lungs and asks, “_Why?” _

And Rip is striding towards him, gripping him boldly by the shoulders - few others would be so bold - and whispering out, “Because you never leave one of your own behind, Leonard. It was you who told me that...Even if it is at the expense of myself.”

There is so much bittersweet agony in those brown eyes, those eyes that have seen so much history, _ so much of Leonard _ without knowing, that Leonard can barely stand it.

“How long do you have,” he asks, with what breath he doesn’t know.

“Until I...cease?” The way the voice cracks is tragic. “There is no way to tell, but likely not very long. But, before my previous self and I parted ways, I relayed to him the exact sequence of events that would unfold, what I planned to do, and where to pick you up once it was done.”

Rip is still gripping him, a little tighter now, and Leonard looks at him, _ truly _ looks at him; this man who had seen all of what Time had to offer, and done what few others had done: valued Leonard’s present over his past and chose him to be part of his future; gave him purpose in a way that no preacher or youth counsellor, warden or superhero ever had; opened him up and found, without asking, that icy part of him that stopped anyone new from getting too deep, and broken the seal.

It is perhaps one of the only payoffs he never saw coming. And that is both a terrifying and liberating feeling. “Seems that the Powers that Be gave you some wrap-up time, Captain. Now just what do you plan on doing with it.”

But it is second only to the moment that Rip leans forward with weighted purpose anew and kisses him.

And Leonard’s heart _ soars. _

It is like the air has returned, huge gusts of it, an East wind filling his lungs and making him drunk on the oxygen, as if Rip is breathing a voice back into him. It was like every quiet moment in Rip’s study yet to pass, not reading a word of the book’s pages just so he could be there in the moment; and every valuable trinket across time he’d yet to steal like the proverbial fridge magnets of their adventures; and every gleaming piece of Rip’s revolver working in concert to put any enemy who dared to go against them, on their asses for good; and every unspoken word hanging in the air as clear and distinct as the holograms on the _ Waverider_; and every stolen touch, and the ones yet to be given, promising things that no word or look or thought could ever invoke.

“Something that requires no plan,” says Rip, rushed now, and he’s closing the space again, as if the connection with Leonard’s lips will tether him to the world.

A world, Leonard thinks resignedly, filled with all the furtive looks and sarcastic comments they’ve never exchanged and all the leather jackets they could’ve; of confident hands and middle fingers and the tandem heartbreak of two rogues cut from different cloth who owed the Universe nothing.

And when Rip begins to shiver and tremble in concert with each jarring time quake that only he can feel, a cacophony of little deaths pulling him away from Leonard and into the Ether - into Time and Legend and a silence like no other - Leonard knows he now stands in a Universe which owes everything to that rogue, just as he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at [kleptoandpyro.tumblr.com](https://kleptoandpyro.tumblr.com)
> 
> Interested in talking DC Arrowverse with other writers? Get involved in a community where we basically talk ships and fanworks and write fic all day long? Find beta readers and like minded folk?
> 
> Then join us in the [The Flarrowverse Shipyard Discord Server](https://discord.gg/D4RFsRq)! You've got nothing to lose, come get involved!


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